Reads (104)

No, I don't. In which I try getting to grips with Substack

After my Christmas break away from (almost) daily posting (!), and with the usual year-end retrospective and New Year prospective, I realize I have to get to grips with Substack. I started The Daily Inchoate on a whim, with the simple idea of getting into a daily writing habit — er, a Writing Practice. Let’s make it sound “meaningful.” 🤓

But now, I’m sucked in. I had no idea that Substack was all this.

All what? Let me try to unpack it, from my absolute newbie perspective.

Two Powers

Let’s start with two superpowers I’ve become a vict… er, beneficiary of. 🤣

First there is the power of the recommends, those five or so other substacks that get suggested to you when you subscribe to one. Once I got the Substack app, so posts weren’t all coming into my email inbox, it became so easy to say, “Sure, give me this one and this one. This (new) person (I’m following) probably knows what else is good to read on Substack, right?” But now I’m at Reads (104). 😅

Who are we kidding? I don’t read 104. I am learning the lesson not to add five more, and five more, and five more.

I should say, I’m back down to 104 after I’ve pruned a bunch. Some stacks are dormant or dead, others are low quality, others are off topic for me (even though they sounded enticing, or had one post I enjoyed, or came highly recommended). A few others, including some prominent ones that keep getting recommended, have completely opaque titles like “Issue No. 456” and are useless to me as I skim or scan my inbox to see which posts to read. I’m sorry, but I’ve unsubscribed those babies.

Power no. 2. — community features. It’s one thing to have an inbox of new posts to check out. It’s quite something else to make heads or tales of chat and… notes? I still don’t understand the difference between the two. Like, here’s a basic question: where do “re-stacks” go? I actually re-stacked something the other day (whoa; retweet-esque), but I have no idea where it went… (?) 🤔

I don’t mind peeking at chats from people I’m following. I’m glad for the distinction between people and their publications.

(But speaking of which… I mean, speaking of people… there is precisely that temptation not only to subscribe, and to get five more, and five more, but even to go and see what they read, on their Reads tab. Thankfully, not only does one discover a g’zillion other substacks of potential interest, but there is also some wisdom there. Many people, experienced Substackers it seems, read only a couple dozen other newsletters. Bully for them! It’s also useful to see which they consider worth paying for.)

Re: power no. 2, all that above is a roundabout way to get to the constant talking point I see around the platform, which is “build community.” In some ways, I feel like I’ve finally found (some of) “my people” on Substack — unlike on X or LinkedIn (or Insta or FB), where I struggle — but there is no way I can be a part of Communities (104).

Five Options for Reads (104)

Right. So. What are the options? Here are five. Let’s take them in reverse order.

The fifth “option” isn’t really an option that I can see. It would be to bring a few select subscriptions back into my email inbox. I see that I have a basic setting, across the board for all my subscriptions, to do only email, or “either” (email or app) via some kind of Smart system, or “both” email and app. No way to “email,” That would be a deluge. “Both” would be even worse! It would be nice to have an option per subscription as how I want to receive it.

(Warning: digression. Now is as a good time as any to mention how I finally “found” Substack as a platform. I was already subscribing by email to a bunch of newsletters, randomly from all over the place, which were coming in by mail. It was a deluge. I was starting to unsubscribe (actually I was moving them to RSS — more on this below), when I started realizing they were almost all on Substack. “Hey, I bet there’s an app for that, and I can just put them all in one place.” Heh. Little did I know that I would get sucked into starting my own stack and soon after be Ms. Reads (104). And that I’d be writing this post.)

Fourth option. Revel in the chaos, skim and scan, and save individual posts from whoever and whenever, if I want to read them later or save for some purpose. This is closest to my reality, truthfully. Unless you’re an incredibly disciplined reader of a given channel, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

To grab one-off findings, you could use Substack’s “Save” feature. I tried it. But I’ve decided against it. I use Readwise Reader for my read-it-later app, and I’m already struggling to manage my reading queue over there. I can’t have To Read queues all over the place. I will share to Readwise. One-offs. This is good.

Third option. Use the “invisible” subscriptions feature available via Substack settings. It looks like I can hide some stacks that I follow from the Reads (104) column on my profile. I haven’t actually tried this yet, but I might use this feature to distinguish between my actual reads and a few “utility” reads, i.e. things I’m now subscribed to about writing, or about Substack as a platform. Nobody needs to know I’m trying to figure out how to hack the system. 😜

Second option. Prune ruthlessly. Besides the criteria listed above, this partly comes down to which publications I might eventually decide are worth paying for. A “free subscription,” by the way, is never truly free in terms of your time, energy, and attention (your TEA — hat tip to Charlie Gilkey). Getting to grips with anything is all right here.

First option. Use RSS. I’m really into RSS these days, both via Readwise Reader, and recently re-adding Inoreader into my mix, because my feeds got out of control on RWR, and I had to make ruthless choices. With RSS, I don’t have to subscribe to various stacks. I can just “follow” them.

THUS, my strategy going forward, to deal with Reads (104), will be a mix of the above.

Writerly Ethos

This post is getting long! I’ll add three more things quickly (ish).

The first is that, wow, Substack is a bona fide community of writers, including professional ones. Yikes. That’s intimidating.

On the other hand, the upside is that it is provoking me to become a (better) writer myself. I got really burned out trying to write as an academic in the context of publish-or-perish.

And yet, otherwise, I’m terribly undisciplined. For me, reading becomes thinking becomes talking (if there’s anyone around) becomes “sharing” — via email (in the old days) or via private chat (in the new days). I once told a colleague that I know I’m at heart a teacher, because as soon as I learn anything new, I am constitutionally compelled to share it, with anyone who might listen.

However, knowing that this impetuosity can start “bugging” people, I even tried starting a blog at one point, appropriately called “In Lieu,” with the idea that I should write there instead of spamming folks with my TL;DRs. (They invented that acronym for me.) Undisciplined as I was (am), though, the project never got off the ground. What’s the fun in writing out into the ether?

In any case, it really is time. 2024 may be the year of re-awakening dormant writerly chops.

Journaling for 2024?

Along with writing, there is journaling.

You know when a certain idea or suggestion starts appearing on your radar from 20 different unrelated directions over days or weeks? It’s like the Universe is trying to tell you something.

(More likely, it’s a fad going around, or a hidden algorithm. New Year, as a season, sure is a time for re-invigorated “journaling” habits to make an appearance.)

In fact, I’ve been using Diarly app for over a year now, with half a dozen journals set up in it and sporadic entries. Diarly is great, btw. I can type entries, or I can use my “Scribbles” journal to write by hand on my iPad.

I also went back to using a paper notebook for taking miscellaneous notes (scribbles) while I work during the day. What can I say? I’m old school.

I’m not sure which medium will best suit a renewed journaling habit. In any case, it’s on my radar. It’s directly related to the writer ethos and the habit Practice.

Another Substack?!

I started Daily Inchoate for inchoate(!) stuff I hoped would eventually get sorted to go on my website. The idea was, and still is, simply to get into a daily habit.

But I may start another publication that stays a bit more on target for a public service / business idea I’m working on. Substack makes it ridiculously easy. Power no. 3.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned. I’ll put comments “on” for this post. If anyone should happen to read it, I would love to hear feedback on getting to grips with Substack or best practices.